Page 2 of Hunter's Valentine

I planned on sheltering in abandoned buildings along the way. The settlement of New Franklin should be in the nearby town of Franklin. It couldn’t be too far, since we were able to tune in toStaying Alive, a daily radio show that broadcast from the settlement; though Jack, the radio host, had been careful not to give away their exact location.

Perhaps Mr. Willis was right, and New Franklin wasn’t nearly as nice as Jack made it sound. Mr. Willis was convinced that they used the radio show to lure survivors in and eat them. But my gut told me otherwise.

I was already halfway through our little town when I saw the Xarc’n warrior on one of the roofs.

The buff, loincloth-wearing aliens had shown up shortly after the space bugs, claiming it was their life’s duty to fight “the scourge.” Not everyone had believed them. Our government sure hadn’t.

I stayed close to the building and got off my bike. Luckily for me, the alien warrior looked to be preoccupied with something else and hadn’t seen me.

He was huge, almost seven feet tall. He had massive, ram-like horns and equally substantial shoulders, making him the epitome of top-heavy. Despite the winter chill, he wore nothing on his upper body except for a few strategically placed pieces of armor, showing off his well-formed pecs. From where I stood, the building blocked my view of anything below his chest, but I knew he’d be wearing a leather loincloth. They all did.

They all—at least all the ones I’d seen on the internet before we lost our connection—had yellow eyes, purple, leathery skin, and massive claws on their feet. All our differences aside, they were undeniably humanoid, especially the upper body, and every last one of them would put a bodybuilder to shame.Our species were also “compatible” enough that there’d been accounts of them stealing women away into their shuttles for nefarious purposes.

This one was still busy with something, so I used the distraction to sneak around him, looping around several buildings to put some distance between us. I didn’t want to be a statistic.

But then I heard it. Oh god, I smelled it, too!

Panic filled me as I covered my nose with a gloved hand and searched for a safe place to hide.

A little farther ahead, a shop door was swinging in the wind. An open door usually meant intact windows and a way to lock up. I hopped onto my bike and pedaled as fast as I could toward it. I was just wheeling my things into the store when they came into view: a writhing mass of alien bugs stampeding down the adjacent street. I froze, not wanting to make any movement that would draw their attention, but it was too late.

A shrill call had me looking up. Two hideous winged scorpions were in the sky despite the early hour, and one of them had spotted me. The bugs all turned, forgetting their original destination, and started down the street toward me.

“Ahh! Fuck, fuck, fuck!”

I dug in my pack for the last decoy. It would buy me a few seconds at most, but I might as well try. I threw the package of rotten meat as hard as I could, adrenaline giving me superhuman strength. It hit the ground with a wet splat, the plastic tearing as the rotten contents spilled out.

Then I scrambled inside the store as death came barreling toward me.

Chapter 2: Mur’k

I realized my carefully laid plans were all for nothing the moment the scourge started veering away from my strategically placed traps. I’d spent all yesterday evening setting them up and had then run around with a lure at dawn, trying to gather as many of the infernal creatures as possible so I could burn them all to a crisp at once. But while the first part had gone as planned, the scourge had started down the wrong road only two intersections away from their demise.

That could only mean one thing: something had caught their attention, something alive and edible. I scented the air, but all I could smell were the scourge and their blasted fungus.

I backed up and made a running jump onto the next roof to see if there was anything I had missed. I’d chosen this area in particular to set my traps because of how close together the buildings were and how easy it was to maneuver from building to building without ever setting foot on the ground. It meant I could take my time destroying the flyers methodically without having to worry about the scuttlers or spitters.

I finally detected it two roofs over—something delicious and delicate. Human, but not like any of the ones I’d scented before. I knew there was a small group of survivors living in this area.I’d seen them earlier in the winter, but they’d been exploring as a group, and it was clear that whoever had messed up my traps had come alone. Strange. It was rare for humans to forage by themselves.

There was the smell of something else as well, something putrid. Rotting meat. The human must have thrown it to distract the scourge, and that was what the scuttlers were now investigating.

I inhaled again, trying to isolate the human scent. Female, for sure. Any other hunter would be excited to rescue a female and bring her back to his shuttle, but not me. I wasn’t interested in a mate. I did, however, want to see who’d messed up my hunt. I’d spent a good deal of time setting it up, and I was more than a little annoyed that she’d wrecked it.

This hunt was supposed to beat my personal best. And now it was ruined.

The sudden sound of gunfire rang out from one of the buildings below. That must be her, though what her weapon could possibly do against this many scourge, I didn’t know.

I sighed. The human might have ruined my hunt, but I wasn’t going to let her die, not when she smelled so utterly delicious.

Usually, I preferred to fight the flyers melee-style for a fun challenge, but time was of the essence here, so I used my blaster instead. I grounded them by shooting them in the wings; those were large, easy targets. Then I got close enough to get in two headshots—one for each of the flyers. Now all I had to do was get the scourge’s attention away from the little human.

I was glad I’d decided to trade with the hunters living in New Franklin. The hunters there worked and lived with a largegroup of humans, and they had this wonderful invention called a repellent. It only cost me a few dozen useless “phone batteries.”

The repellent worked much the same way our lures did, using sound. But while our lures sent out a frequency that sounded like a distressed queen to draw the creatures near, the human-made repellent emitted a noise the creatures couldn’t stand. I hated it too. It was the most obnoxious thing I’d ever heard and it hurt my ears, but it worked to get rid of the scourge when I didn’t want to hunt anymore. The combination of the repellent, my lure, a series of well-placed traps, and fire meant that I’d been more successful than ever in my hunts.

I turned off the lure that I’d been using to draw the scourge in and switched on the deterrent. A high-pitched whirring that made my head want to burst had me immediately clenching my jaw. The scourge heard it, too, and the majority of them scrambled away, trying to get as far away from it as possible. A few particularly hungry ones stayed, deciding that food was worth rupturing their tympanic membranes.

My eardrums weren’t faring any better, so I waited just long enough for the retreating scourge to put some distance between us before I turned the repellent off. With luck, the creatures would’ve already forgotten why they were here. I was just glad there weren’t any of those long, centicreep creatures in this batch.

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